


lessons in formality

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Crushes, F/M, Fluff, Gift Exchange, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, i know it's not valentine's day but hear me out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: “I have something for you.” Roy said. He rustled through a drawer in his own desk and before Riza could turn around to see what he was doing, he placed ten red roses on hers. “One for each year I’ve known you.”
Relationships: (just a bit. a hint), Jean Havoc & Riza Hawkeye, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang, RoyAi
Comments: 19
Kudos: 118





	lessons in formality

**Author's Note:**

> for rai <3

“That for someone special?”

  
Riza lifted her head to lock eyes with an employee. They were wearing a blue store-issued apron. A pink and purple ribbon with the words “Happy Valentine’s Day!” was stitched on it in yellow and pinned to her front. How long had it been since Riza last celebrated Valentine’s Day? Was she still elementary aged? She had a vague memory of her and her mother baking cookies for her classmates, decorating them in sprinkles, using funnels full of icing to write personalized notes on their tops. She could still smell the sugar and taste the icing as it sat on her tongue. She smelled it on her nose, too. Riza had tried to replicate those cookies the year after her mother had died, but no dice. 

  
The employee was looking at Riza expectantly, her brown eyes shimmering beneath the stuffy market lights. As the overheads buzzed above, so did the woman’s eyes. “No, no,” Riza said, and replaced the chocolates on the shelf. She’d done that a few times now: chosen a box only to second guess herself. It wasn’t like her to be indecisive, but buying chocolates wasn’t really like her either. “They’re for a friend. A coworker, actually.” She paused, frowning at the array of chocolate candies. Some had cherries inside of them — Did he even like cherries? — and some were coated with almonds or peanuts; some housed creamy pockets of caramel or raspberry filling, and some were dark or white... “For my boss.” Riza blurted at the shelves. 

  
The employee smiled politely. “They must be a really good boss if you’re buying them Valentine’s Day chocolates, ma’am.” The employee’s eyes crinkled, and it was only in that moment that Riza realized the woman was aged; wrinkled hands and sagging cheeks, lines drawn across her forehead, crinkles in her smile and around her eyes. Signs of life. Her name was Agnes, and Riza wondered briefly if Agnes might have an inkling of her intentions. Had this woman also gotten chocolates for her boss before? How did it go? Was it embarrassing? Did it feel her with equal amounts of loathing and giddiness? Was she court-martialed? Agnes’s mouth said nothing, but her eyes were talkative. Riza could see whole decades in those eyes, swimming around with the light.

  
“They’re okay,” she said. “A bit lazy. But I’ve only just started working for them and I’m holding onto hope that they age out of their bad habits.”

  
Agnes laughed. “In my experience,” she said, plucking a box of chocolates and depositing it into Riza’s open hands, “they never do.”

♛

Riza wondered if they would melt down there in her desk drawer. It was unusually warm for mid-spring. The radio announced record highs. Eastern HQ’s A/C system was choking under the pressure, dying out in one wing and running at half capacity in the other. The halls were clogged with sweaty men, most complaining loudly at maintenance and running their fingers through sloshy hair. Riza might have joined them if this were any ordinary day, but the chocolates made it special. The chocolates set the clock. Riza opened her desk drawer, checked on them, touched her hand to the deep red box they lay in, and then closed her drawer again.

  
She didn’t know if she’d ever felt more stupid in her life.

  
She settled on a box which contained several kinds of sugary chocolates: dark and white, cherries, caramel, and chocolate for filling. He could pick and choose which chocolate he wanted and giving him options saved Riza the trouble of having to puzzle out which it was he preferred. Not only did she not have time for such detective work, but she didn’t have the patience, either. It would require her to talk with his best friend, Lieutenant Hughes, and while she liked the man it was taking her some time to get used to his… habits. Mr. Mustang was seemingly immune on most occasions, even when he pretended to be exasperated by it, but Riza hadn’t quite gotten there yet. 

  
Mr. Mustang. She chastised herself inwardly for referring to him that way. She hadn’t called him that since they met again in Ishval, yet she couldn’t stop her mind from thinking it. It was like consciously she knew that he was her boss; no longer Mr. Mustang to her but an officer, and an officer in charge. The power scales had tipped, and no matter how much he would try and convince her that all the power still lay with her, she couldn’t forget that he ranked higher on the military’s list. She couldn’t forget that she had melted chocolate in the bottom drawer of her desk, and that he hadn’t paid her any mind all day. She couldn’t ignore the way that made her feel, Stupidly, she opened her drawer and checked the chocolates again.

  
The building’s A/C kicked back on around lunchtime. While everyone else filtered out of their offices and into the hall, Riza stayed behind under the guise of finishing work she’d been falling behind on. Jean threw her a disbelieving brow quirk and stuck a cigarette between his teeth. He always did that, chewed on the butt of an unlit cigarette like his preoccupation wasn’t with smoking but with having something in his mouth. Rebecca used to call it his “complex.” It was sort of charming on the days when he never lit it. “You’re never behind on work, Ri.” He said, and then corrected himself. “Lieutenant Hawkeye.”

  
Riza glanced at Roy as he glanced at her. He was shrugging his coat on, that long, black greatcoat he took to draping over his shoulders. Riza couldn’t suss out whether his dark look was directed at her attempt to stay behind without the team, or Jean’s careless flub of formality. In his defense, he and Riza had been friends in the Academy. She was Ri, he was Jean. 

  
“I have someone to keep up after.” She said. Her eyes flickered from Jean to her superior, who had stopped midway while pulling on his ridiculous greatcoat. “You go on ahead without me.”

  
Jean waved a hand in the air. “If you say so,” he said. “I’ll bring you back something.” 

  
“Thanks,” Riza said. She returned to the task at hand: pretending to read over something she had already read. It was a plea for a revamped gutter system in a small city north of Resembool. Riza hadn’t even bothered to set it on Roy’s desk. She knew the brass would never approve it, two-hundred-fifty signatures or not. There simply wasn’t any way to get the money without raising taxes, and the only people that would hurt would be the farmers and the average worker. It wouldn’t look too good on Fuhrer Bradley if intake from the east suddenly dwindled because farmers couldn’t afford to keep stock, and General Grumman wouldn’t like the negative publicity either. 

  
“I think I’ll stay too.” Riza didn’t raise her head. She could feel that he wanted her to; feel his heavy gaze on her. She worried for the chocolate, sweating it out in a box in her drawer. Would the chocolate come away from the cherries? Would the caramel filling melt too? Would she open the box to find the chocolate slushed, like a warm milkshake? She’d wanted to set it out in front of the A/C, but she wasn’t ready for Roy to know about their existence yet. She felt like a preteen. 

  
“That’s hardly necessary, sir.” Go away.

  
“It’s only fair, Lieutenant.”

  
“Life isn’t fair, sir.” 

  
“You’ve read that petition twice now.” 

  
Riza was halfway through reading the same line for the third time. She stopped on the word _right_ , underlined and bolded. It was their _right_ , the petition said, to live comfortably. 

  
“It’s an important petition.” Roy had many admirers in the eastern offices. There was a short brunette who worked the desk at Archives. Her bob bounced playfully when she talked. There was that blonde Riza sometimes saw at the range, the one Jean had more-or-less drooled over; there was a redhead in Receiving, and a brunette in General Grumman’s retinue who sometimes swapped messages between Roy and his mentor, lingering in Roy’s doorway, one ankle hooked behind the other, grinning. She had exceptionally white teeth. On the windowsill behind Roy’s desk were two roses, each a different color, and two other boxes of chocolates. The only solace Riza had was that they were probably as melted as hers. 

  
She stopped thinking when Roy joined her at her desk, one hand coming forward to brace against her desk as the other sat leisurely on the peak of her chair. This was so stupid. Her heart was beating so fast and she had melted chocolate in her desk and she really, really didn’t like that lingering brunette and this was so, so stupid. 

  
“Grumman would never approve this.” Roy said, his finger trailing along the page as he skimmed. “You know that, so you would have read this and moved on. Why is it that you’re reading it again now, Lieutenant?”

  
He was so close she could smell his cologne — sharp, dark. So close that his chest almost bumped her back. Heat piled there between them, and Riza looked up into the doorway, half expecting to see someone there who would hand Roy another rose or box of chocolates, twisting their ankles together and batting big, golden brown eyes at her superior.

  
Why was this happening?

  
“I’m thorough.” She deadpanned. Roy didn’t buy it, but his hand skimmed her arm as he drew away and went back to his desk. What kind of game was he playing? What kind of game was she playing, for that matter? Jean returned with two plastic-wrapped sandwiches from the fridge in the cafeteria, one with pickles and one with no tomato, and dropped the pickled sandwich off at Roy’s desk and the tomato-less off at Riza’s. She nibbled on it for an hour or so until it had gotten too warm and soggy to be appetizing anymore, and she swept it into the trash. 

  
Riza refused to look at Roy until the workday was over. At five o’ clock, she gathered her things and made it look like she was leaving. She couldn’t until everyone was out of the office, Roy included, because she feared that if she left the chocolates in her desk overnight, they would burn through the bottom of it like they were made of acid. Or worse, a janitor might find them and leave them on her desk as they sometimes did when they found a pen she’d dropped or Jean’s pack of cigs on his desk chair. A kind gesture but one that could bring Riza much headache. She loitered at her desk as each soldier shuffled out ahead of her. Jean gave her another look as he left, knocking his knuckles on the doorframe. “See ya tomorrow, Boss.” He said. 

  
Predictably, Roy stayed. He didn’t stand to pile his gifts into his arms — of which he’d received a few more since lunch — or even to grab his greatcoat. He waved other staff by as they peeked into his office, some grinning and others a bit curious, probably waiting to catch the officer alone. 

  
“I have something for you.” Roy said. The clock on the wall read 5:17. They had sat in silence for nearly twenty minutes and now he spoke, just as the rest of HQ was finally getting home. He rustled through a drawer in his own desk and before Riza could turn around to see what he was doing, he placed ten red roses on hers. “One for each year I’ve known you.” He said. 

  
Riza couldn’t speak. It was like someone had dumped cinnamon down her throat. She tried to swallow the speechlessness away, but everything was dry and thick with nerves; heavy. He’d bought her flowers. Roses? For each year…? 

  
They were pretty. Some were speckled with different colors, white and blue, but mostly they were red. Riza suspected alchemy played a role in the color, but that was okay. She liked that they were different, a bit special in comparison to the ones he had been given earlier in the day. They were tied together with a neat, thin white ribbon. A little tag on them read MUSTANG, ROY and beneath that: _Thank you_.

  
“Is something wrong?”

  
“You got me flowers.” She said. “Why did you get me flowers, sir?” She could think of nothing but the gifts on his windowsill, collecting sunlight while hers were kept safe in his desk drawer. He hadn’t been hiding them like she had been hiding his chocolates. He’d been preserving them, like they were an important asset. Petty as it might have been, Riza felt a twinge of triumph. Then she remembered. She pulled the box of chocolates from her desk drawer and slid them across the desk into Roy’s waiting hand. He looked at her, puzzled, and then at the box. 

  
“You got me chocolates.” He said. 

  
“They might be a little melted, sir, I apologize.”

  
He untied the red ribbon that kept the lid on the box and winced. “Maybe a little.” He lied. Riza could only imagine what the inside of the box looked like. Slushed chocolate. She wasn’t brave enough to peek. “But I do love the chocolate covered cherries.” He dipped a finger into the box and it came away chocolatey. Then he promptly stuffed it into his mouth. “Nothing an hour in the ice box won’t fix.” He fitted the ribbon back to the box and smiled. 

  
Something in Riza’s chest fluttered a little; something tightened, pulling her ribs inward like someone were sewing them together, and she found herself needing to cough before she could speak again. These were strange, unknown times. Mr. Mustang was her boss and here her chest was caving in at the sight of him. The hairs on her arms prickled at the thought of the women who had trailed after him today, putting their chocolates and flowers into his hands, dreaming of seeing his smile as Riza did now. 

  
She wrote this off as a symptom of her early twenties.

  
“Let me walk you home, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” Roy had migrated to the corner of the office without Riza noticing. He was fitting himself in his greatcoat, the box of chocolates she had given him tucked under his arm. His other gifts lie gathering dust on the windowsill. 

  
“Are you going to leave those there overnight, sir?” He looked up at the windowsill a bit disinterestedly and shrugged. 

  
“I can’t carry them all home, Lieutenant. I’ve room for only one.”


End file.
